Roast Pig

S2 E2: Signals

Veep, 2012.

There are moments in American political history when the nation holds its breath, moments of crisis, of principle, of leadership.

And then there are moments when the Vice President of the United States, dressed like Annie Oakley’s cynical cousin, stands in front of a slowly rotating pork carcass while issuing a deeply conflicted statement of support for Israel. Welcome to “Signals,” the Veep episode that dares to ask: How many pork-based metaphors can you spin before the pig is fully cooked?

The episode sends Selina Meyer to a North Carolina pig roast as part of the administration’s tone-deaf “Listen to Rural America” campaign, helpfully acronymized as “U.S. Hey.” Yes, someone got paid to name that.

The event, known regionally and reverently as a “pig pickin’”—features everything you’d expect from political optics gone feral: cotton candy, hay bales, and a fully spit-roasted hog glistening like it’s running for office. The pig turns. The cameras roll. Selina smiles. Jewish voters everywhere recoil.

Kent Davison, watching from D.C., has an aneurysm made entirely of polling data and demands that Mike “de-pork the visual.” With Gary too busy performing eyebrow semaphore and a rogue cowboy hat situation developing, that task falls to Jonah. He does what any statesman would do: he throws his own body in front of the pig. It’s pork-censorship as performance art, made tragically ineffective by his unforgivably tailored pants.

Meanwhile, Selina’s entire covert communication system, a sophisticated set of physical “signals” to escape conversations, photo ops, or basic human interaction, has been WikiLeaked to the press. Eyebrow rub = “get me out of here.” Ear tug = “invent a phone call.”

Further complicating Selina’s bacon-wrapped optics is a rogue essay penned by her daughter Catherine, praising the documentary Five Broken Cameras and its portrayal of “brutal, illegal Israeli aggression.” Political fallout ensues. Florida’s 29 electoral votes dangle in the balance like the last hot link on a grill.

Attempts at damage control are as nuanced as a BBQ sauce fight. Catherine refuses to apologize. Selina threatens to “daughterboard” her. Mike flies to the college in a helicopter he fully expects will decapitate him. Somehow, this all ends in a hostage policy being formulated on an iPad aboard Air Force Two, while Selina’s hat hair quietly undermines national security.

It’s important to pause here and honor the pig roast for what it truly is: the episode’s grotesque centerpiece. In most political dramas, it would be a metaphor. On Veep, it is literal, spinning, camera-facing, and unrelenting. It is both main dish and backdrop. It is foreign policy with a crispy skin.

And while Selina tries to express solemn support for the Jewish people, the pork quietly photobombs her like a bad Tinder date with no chill. This is the Veep version of Dr. Strangelove: tightly choreographed, wildly inappropriate, and fully on fire.

“Signals” is a perfect roast in every sense, pork and people both. It skewers bureaucracy, PR fakery, and the fragile infrastructure of Selina Meyer’s carefully curated life. And it does so while a whole hog slowly rotates behind her, like a greasy metronome counting down the seconds to her next gaffe.

It’s a meditation on modern politics, sure. But mostly, it’s a cautionary tale: never attend a pig roast when your eyebrows are doing all the talking.

And for God’s sake, keep your signals off WikiLeaks.

Make it! Whole Pig Roast from The Noshery.